07/08/2015
A delegation from EUROsociAL met with the President of Costa Rica within the framework of a dialogue to implement a regional policy to strengthen economic and social cohesion in the country.
Working breakfast at the "Thinking About National Development from a Regional Perspective Forum"
Costa Rica’s Ministry of National Planning and Economic Policy (MIDEPLAN) and Legislative Assembly held the forum Thinking About National Development from a Regional Perspective with the support of EUROsociAL, a programme financed by the EU and managed by the FIIAPP.
The objective of the forum was to reflect on the need to establish national strategies for regional development to achieve economic and social equity in the country. EUROsociAL is supporting the Costa Rican government in the design of a National Policy for Regional Development as an instrument for reducing territorial disparities in the interior of the country; to do so, in coming days it will form a mixed commission within the Legislative Assembly, in which the Ministry of Planning will also participate, to prepare the draft law.
The forum included the participation of European experts who spoke about regional development policy in the EU, with examples of both European regional policies and those of individual Member States.
In the conversations held in this forum, the Minister of Planning stated that “the regional focus does not just mean compensating the less developed regions for their disadvantages but also improving the growth and competitiveness of each of them, establishing national policies that contribute to reducing disparities to achieve comprehensive growth of the country based on the principles of equity, with a focus on increasing welfare levels and improving the living conditions of the people who live in each territory”. The President of the Legislative Assembly, Rafael Ortiz Fábrega, for his part, stressed that this forum is important because it makes it possible to examine the European experience to “promote effective responses to a problem we have today, which is the clear existence of two disparate realities: our urban metropolitan zones with high economic and social development indicators, and, on the other hand, the cantons in peripheral regions with serious deficiencies in all categories”.
As part of this forum, the experts attended a breakfast hosted by Luis Guillermo Solís, President of the Republic of Costa Rica and First Lady Mercedes Peña Domingo, and the Minister of Planning, Olga Marta Sánchez Oviedo.
